Pope Francis would never have heard of Thomas Steven Sanders, who worked in Las Vegas at a warehouse renting out storage units. In 2010, Sanders met Suellen Roberts when she came to rent a unit from his company. The couple began dating. Two months later, Roberts took her 12-year-old daughter, Lexis, on a trip with Sanders to a wildlife park near the Grand Canyon.
As they were returning to Nevada after three days of traveling, Sanders pulled off Interstate 40 in a remote location in the Arizona desert and shot Roberts in the head in front of her daughter. He forced Lexis into the car and drove several days across the country, keeping the girl captive.
Not satisfied with kidnapping the traumatized girl after brutally killing her mother, Sanders shot Lexis four times, cut her throat, and left her body in a wooded area in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. A hunter found her body on October 8, 2010.
Sanders admitted killing both the mother and daughter. Forensic evidence established beyond doubt the violence Sanders inflicted on Lexis, including the fact that he slashed Lexis’s throat with such force that the knife left cut marks on her cervical vertebra.
Pope’s Pleas for Herod-Like Child Killers
Two weeks ago, Pope Francis begged President Joe Biden to commute Sanders’s death sentence, as well as those of 39 other inmates on federal death row. The U.S. bishops joined the shrill chorus of liberal Catholics and leftwing activists pleading for Biden to have mercy on the child murderer along with serial killers and others.
On December 19, the pontiff phoned the president, reiterating his call for Biden to commute the sentences of 40 criminals on federal death row. This would spare them the death penalty and give them life in prison without the possibility of parole. And just before Christmas, Biden did — commuting the sentences of all but three of those inmates.
Pope Francis shakes hands with U.S. vice president Joe Biden as he takes part at a congress on the progress of regenerative medicine and its cultural impact, being held in the Pope Paul VI hall at the Vatican, Friday, April 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Two of the three who did not were white supremacists: antisemite Robert G. Bowers, who gunned down 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dylann Roof, who slaughtered nine black parishioners during a prayer service at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The other was jihadi Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set off twin blasts near the crowded finish line at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013 — killing three people and injuring more than 260.
Four Other Child Murderers
Following papal orders, the outgoing president commuted the death sentences of four other child killers including Jorge Avila-Torrez, who in 2005 kidnapped nine-year-old Krystal Tobias and eight-year-old Laura Hobbs while they were riding their bikes in a Chicago suburb, sexually assaulted them, and stabbed them to death.
In a travesty of justice, Laura’s father, Jerry Hobbs, was accused of the murders. Hobbs had found the girls’ bodies in a public park. He spent five years in prison pending trial while Avila-Torrez remained at large.
By then, the murderer had joined the Marines. In 2009, he entered the room of his fellow Marine Amanda Jean Snell, “jumped on her as she slept in her bed, bound her wrists with the power cord from her laptop computer and strangled her with the rest of the cord.” Snell was 20 years old.
Avila-Torrez had prior convictions for kidnapping three young women in Arlington, Va., in 2010, “one of whom he raped, sodomized, strangled and left for dead,” according to media reports.
Child murderers Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., and Daniel Troya also had a surprise Christmas gift from the pope and the president. On October 13, 2006, the pair stopped a family of four on a Florida highway, and then shot to death Jose Luis Escobedo, his wife Yessica Guerrero Escobedo, and their two sons, four-year-old Luis Julian Escobedo and three-year-old Luis Damian Escobedo. The boys died in their mother’s arms.
Philadelphia drug dealer Kaboni Savage, who was convicted of ordering the firebombing of a house where a federal witness lived, also got the president’s Christmas card commuting his death sentence. He killed 12 people, including four children, in the firebombing.
Vatican Rejoices After Pontiff’s Successful Intervention
Vatican News ecstatically reported Biden’s commutations of the child murderers, trumpeting the success of Francis’s intervention both through his earlier appeal and his recent telephone call with the president.
“Biden’s decision to commute death sentences cannot be overturned by his successor, despite a pledge by Donald Trump to resume executions at the federal level after his inauguration as president in January,” the pope’s mouthpiece smugly remarked, noting that the commutations did not include “three prisoners convicted of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”
In a press release, the White House explained why Biden chose not to commute the death sentences of Bowers, Roof and Tsarnaev: “He believes that America must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level, except in cases of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder — which is why today’s actions apply to all but those cases.”
Prison Does Not Prevent Killers from Killing
A Wall Street Journal op-ed underscored Biden’s flawed logic, asking: “These killers still get the chair, but multiple child killer Jorge Avila-Torrez doesn’t?”
The op-ed also raised the question of how effective a prison sentence is in the case of hardened murderers when at least a dozen of the inmates whose death sentences Biden commuted murdered fellow inmates while serving their sentences. They include Carlos Caro, Christopher Cramer, Joseph Ebron, Ricky Fackrell, Edgar Garcia, Mark Snarr, and Shannon Agofsky.
Others include Anthony Battle (who killed a prison guard), Wesley Coonce and Charles Hall (who, acting separately, killed fellow prisoners in the mental health units to which they were confined), and Chardrick Fulks and Brandon Basham (who escaped from prison, then kidnapped and killed a woman before being recaptured).
“This illustrates the falsity of the claim that imprisonment is always sufficient to protect others against the worst offenders,” Catholic philosopher Edward Feser posted on X. “To abolish the death penalty would cost lives.”
Catholic Bishops Want President to Go All the Way
While the U.S. Catholic bishops commended Biden for commuting the death sentences of 37 criminals, they urged legislators to go all the way so that even white supremacists and terrorists would no longer face capital punishment.
“We encourage all lawmakers to continue to work towards the total abolition of the death penalty and to redirect the energy and resources that currently go towards executions to provide compassionate and professional assistance to the families of victims,” U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President Archbishop Timothy Broglio said.
Catholic Mobilizing Network Executive Director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy agreed.
“Today’s historic decision by President Biden advances the cause of human dignity and underscores the sacred value of every human life,” she said. “This is a turning point for capital punishment in the United States.”
Pope Francis Would Ask for Hitler’s Death Sentence to Be Lifted
Other Christians, however, voiced their objections to the actions.
“President Biden’s actions are an ill-conceived abuse of the constitutional pardon power that completely disregards consequences, obfuscates responsibility, and sets a very dangerous precedent,” Rev. Job Serebrov, an attorney and archdeacon in the Anglican Church in North America, told The Stream.
Christians on social media pointed out the irony of the pro-abortion president opposing the death penalty. “President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of people who murdered children. Because he believes the death penalty should be reserved only for serious crimes like being an unborn baby in the womb,” journalist Carmine Sabia posted.
“Pope Francis’s position seems to entail that, had Hitler survived the war, it would have been wrong to sentence him to more than about twenty years in prison!” wrote Edward Feser.
Contradicting the teachings of the Bible, the Church Fathers, and the Catholic magisterium, Francis declared the death penalty to be “inadmissible” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church — and later made this doctrine magisterial teaching by including it in his April 2024 declaration Dignitas Infinita.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
The post Biden Bows to Pope Francis, Commuting Death Sentences of Five Child Murderers, Others, on Federal Death Row appeared first on The Stream.
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